The Phillips Collects: Ann Purcell
Collection
The Phillips Collection has acquired Morning Market, the second work by Ann Purcell to enter the collection.
Ann Purcell (b. 1941, Washington, DC) creates large-scale, layered, and gestural compositions that lean into the expressionist vein of abstraction. Morning Market is a hallmark of her mature style, where she cuts and layers painted canvases, making literal the art historical concept of “paintings within paintings” and referencing real places. Purcell is associated with the second generation of American Abstract Expressionist women artists, who, despite being underrecognized, have been gaining greater recognition in recent decades. Morning Market is the second work by Purcell to enter the collection, joining Warm View which was acquired in 1976.
Morning Market is currently on view in the Goh Annex spiral stairwell, next to Stephen Dean’s Prayer Mill (2007) made with colorful plates of dichoroic glass. How do the colors of each work change when experienced together?
